Good evening His Excellency General the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK MC, Her Excellency Lady Cosgrove, distinguished guests, Members of Parliament, Tad Watroba our Co-Patron of National Mining and Related Industries Day, mining colleagues and friends.

Huge thanks to the Governor General, for permitting our National Mining and Related Industries Day event to be held here at the Governor General’s beautiful Canberra residence, for our first mining day gala in Canberra.

National Mining and Related Industries Day is the day to pose a simple question: “where would our nation be without the mining industry?”

Without the mining industry, who would be paying the billions and billions and more in taxes to support our defence forces, police, emergency services, public infrastructure, our elderly, public hospitals, state kindergartens and more? All these services would be effected.

Without the mining industry, what would support their businesses and employees? Without the mining industry these related industries would also be providing less of the billions of revenue to support the services I’ve just mentioned.

We are an industry that is critical to, and at the forefront of underpinning Australia’s prosperity and our living standards.

Without mining, you wouldn’t have electricity or the 35 different minerals available that make up your mobile phone. Imagine that, a world without electricity, or phones, and iPads, or computers.

Our industry has also built large parts of Australia. We have brought investment, opportunities, infrastructure, city conveniences and jobs into some of the most remote, rugged and poor places in our country.

Our industry is vital to today’s civilisation, and, makes an enormous contribution to our country. This is our day to speak up for our industry, and to celebrate it and all of those Australians who work in it.

Each National Mining Day, we award those who’ve done just that. Tonight, I’m delighted to announce that Mr Tony Galligan is this year’s winner of the National Mining and Related Industries Day Award.

During his time as Director of Development with the NSW Government, Mr Galligan was a voice of reason and strongly supported coal exploration, development and export from the Port of Newcastle. He understood that coal is important to jobs, opportunities, revenue, and that thermal coal is essential for our regular power supplies which homes, hospitals, offices and industries all need.

Tony was instrumental in the upgrading of the rail networks from mine to port and construction of the new Newcastle coal terminal. New coal mining operations were successfully established using the advice of Tony Galligan. He has held executive and director positions with Whitehaven Coal and Malabar Coal.

There are some individuals who make outstanding contributions to our industry, and it is critically important they also stand up for our industry. A former national award winner, Mr Steve Finlayson from ALS is here, as is Tad Watroba, who has very successfully worked over decades on some of Australia’s tier one mining projects, in an industry Tad also loves and importantly, speaks up for.

Tony, can I invite you to come to the stage please for your award?

Thank you very much again to the Governor-General and Lady Cosgrave for hosting us tonight for this important national day. Thank you again to our loyal sponsors, and guests, some of whom have travelled a long way, please join us again for next year’s National Mining and Related Industries Day gala dinner, to be held for the first time in Perth.

Thank you and Happy National Mining and Related Industries Day!

I leave you with our National Mining Day song, “Mining Permit Blues,” created by Jim Viets, brought to you this year by the fantastic London Essentials, and more speeches on our Mining Day website.